


Disordered

by MsMockingbird



Series: The Mockingverse [25]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Mockingbird (Comic), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Cooking, Eating Disorders, F/M, PTSD, Swearing, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-07-13 12:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16017713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMockingbird/pseuds/MsMockingbird
Summary: *CW* PTSD Induced Eating DisorderThe team finds out Mockingbird’s been starving herself when she collapses in the field.





	1. Discovery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brndonth1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brndonth1/gifts).



> For brndonth1 — I hope I did okay here for you?
> 
> Obviously, this is a serious piece for me, and a very serious subject. I welcome feedback on my portrayl of Bobbi’s eating disorder as my own takes a different form. The last thing I want to do is spread any harmful ideas or sterotypes.
> 
> If you are suffering from disordered eating, please get help. I’ve included a few websites below and welcome any suggestions there too.
> 
> Remember, no matter what you think of yourself right now you are worthy of being loved and supported. You matter more than any illness. You matter.
> 
> (US) National Eating Disorders Association: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org
> 
> (Canada) National Eating Disorder Information Centre http://nedic.ca
> 
> If anyone has any other groups or links that can offer help, please post in the comments and I will edit them into this note.

To her credit, Mockingbird collapsed five minutes _after_ the worst possible moment for her to collapse. So instead of all the AIM lackeys escaping, only Foreson, their leader, managed to break and run. He kicked her in the stomach on his way past but she was barely conscious at that point anyway.

Falcon and Black Widow corralled the rest of the goons as Hawkeye and Captain America did the 100 meter dash to the insensible stick fighter. 

Hawkeye _almost_ beat Cap. 

“Is she hit?” Yelled the Winter Soldier over the coms, the sound of his precise, controlled covering fire over the remaining enemies echoing behind the words.

“No blood,” snapped Steve. “Poison?”

Iron Man slammed down next to Hawkeye and sprayed Mockingbird with his sensors. “Poison is negatory. But her blood sugar is…nonexistent?”

“MOTHER fucker,” Hawkeye snarled.

Captain America was so intent on Mockingbird he didn’t even scold the archer for his language .

 

*****

On the Quinjet, Mockingbird came to under the glares of the entire team. Her eyes flicked open, scanned the room — and she instantly curled to her side, away from them all. No matter what anyone asked—Cap even raised his voice—she would say nothing in return. 

Collectively the entire team but for Hawkeye moved to the cockpit area, Falcon flying them home. Hawkeye stayed at her side, one hand on her shoulder, not speaking. 

“What is going on?” Bruce Banner muttered under his breath. “What happened to her?”

“I think…” Natasha said very softly, clutching the back of what would have been Clint’s pilot’s seat, half-leaning on Bucky, “Bozhe moi, has anyone seen her eating? At all? In the last three months?”

Steve Rogers turned and slammed his fist into the wall. The sound of his knuckles breaking echoed through the jet, making the rest of the team jump. He withdrew his hand, the deformed bones already resetting themselves.

The rest of the trip was conspicuously silent. 

*****

It was a scrum inside the master bedroom of the Nest. 

They had all followed Clint, despite his incoherent snarling. He’d laid Bobbi down on the comforter, a cheery purple down confection Sam had given them the Christmas before. She immediately scooted up as far as she could, till her head bumped the wall, clutching at a pillow. She still had not spoken, just breathing in big ragged gasps.

The air in the room was thick with tension, fear and anger. Clint was radiating a complex mixture of shame and concern. Steve and Natasha had both gone cold and still as statues. Bruce had retreated to one corner and Bucky to another, both rigid with uncertainty. Sam stood by the door of the bedroom, his gaze turned inward, not seeming to register the rest of them. 

Tony was talking.

He paced as he spoke, feet muffled by the thick carpet, up and down against the floor to ceiling picture windows. Night was coming on, the reflected sunset in the skyscrapers all around the Tower bathing the room in fire.

“Jarvis says she’s showing signs of malnutrition, the beginnings of ketosis. Not dehydrated and her micronutrients are good though,” he gabbled out, talking even faster than normal, hands waving.

“Supplements and water,” muttered Bruce. “I saw her in the labs making up supplements about three weeks after we got back. She told me she was experimenting with new mixtures for the ration bars.”

“So she was already deliberately lying to the team as of then?” Steve said in a calm, even tone. The words fell on the room like missile strikes. On the bed Bobbi flinched with her whole body and curled into a smaller, tighter ball. 

Clint, who had been sitting at the foot of the bed staring at her, popped up and rounded on Steve. Every line of his powerful body and expressive face screamed with tension and violence. Bucky pushed off from the wall, obviously expecting Clint to swing at Steve. Thor looked back and forth from one to the other, also getting ready to intervene in a brawl.

Instead the archer, fists going white at the knuckles, managed a deep ragged breath and ground out: “Blame me. I should have noticed. I should have seen it. I live with her, it’s my fault. I should have seen!”

Behind his back, Bobbi shuddered all the way to her toes, burying her face in the pillow she still had a death grip on. 

Steve studied Clint with a distinctly unfriendly expression. “Yes, you should have noticed — except that you shouldn’t have _had to notice_ because neither your wife nor your team mate should have been concealing the fact that she wasn’t eating. Neither YOUR wife nor OUR team mate should have been putting us all in danger like that.”

Everyone in the room froze. The barely concealed rage in Steve’s voice was horrifying. He continued, his words grinding out of a jaw clenched tight. “I’m not exactly sure what she was expecting we would do if she collapsed somewhere no one could get to her, or in the middle of battle. I wonder if she was expecting us to chose between helping her or saving innocent lives.”

It was only by virtue of years of friendship under the most appalling circumstances that the rest of the team could hear the agonized tremor in the very very back of Steve’s throat. Love and terror turned him from the sensitive, artist into his other form: the soldier — cold, hard and implacable. He responded to fear by attacking when the warrior was ascendant. 

Clint’s expression went blank and he started to blink, throat working. 

A high thin muffled noise drifted through the air from the bed.

It was Bobbi wailing like a lost soul, her face buried in the pillow, whole body was shaking.

“Right, all y’all get the fuck out of this room,” Sam snapped briskly, stepping in between Steve and Clint. A collective shudder went around the team, as though he’d broken a spell. “Nat, you take Clint to your floor and stay with him. Steve you go anywhere but here, I don’t give a shit what you do. You don’t come back up here or speak to her for the rest of the day.” Sam glared at the super soldier, who suddenly seemed to register what he’d been saying. His face drained of color. He nodded silently and quick marched out of the room without another word. Bruce, Tony and Thor fled in his wake, with Bucky moving after them.

“Not you Barnes. You stay,” Sam commanded. He and Nat stared at each other a moment, then she nodded in understanding, gesturing at Bucky to remain. Clint turned and tried to sit back down on the bed but she grabbed him by the shoulder and shook her head. His eyes were shining with tears as he opened his mouth—she laid a finger on his lips before he could speak. 

Slumping, he let her lead him out of the room. 

Sam shut the door after them and turned off all the lights. Bucky sank to the floor in his corner, back to the wall. There was still enough light from the last of the sunset that Bobbi’s shaking form was clearly visible. Sam joined him against the wall and they sat in silence as the woman on the bed wept like her heart was breaking. 

Eventually she stilled, or at least wound down into hiccupping laboured breathing

Sam sighed softly into the darkness. He held out his phone so Bucky could see the screen. 

_Play along, Barnes_

Bucky nodded and the phone was withdrawn. Sam's fingers tapped out a message, got a response, then he put the phone face down. 

"When was the last time you ate something, Bobbi?" he asked her in a firm, gentle voice. The only response he got a was a hiccoughing sob. He asked the same question again, never changing his tone or manner. The fifth time he asked, she finally answered. 

"Two d-d-d-d-days," she whispered, her voice hoarse and painful in the dark. 

"And before that?" 

"Th-th-th-th-three," she responded, tears falling in her words. "Nnnnnnno. Four." 

"Birdy," Sam said with that gentle sigh again, "What were you thinking?" 

She actually laughed at that, a harsh bitter bark. She finally dropped the pillow from her face and sat up--Bucky could see her pretty clearly even in the dim lights. She looked half-dead, pale and hollow cheeked. How had none of them seen it? How had none of them noticed she was starving herself? 

"Compulsion isn't thinking, Sam," she said, her voice still weak and tremulous but at least the stutter had faded, which was good. "I...after...the Kree...they...it was all my nightmares wrapped up in ribbons and jammed down my throat." 

"Nice word choice," Sam snorted at her and for just the briefest moment shared amusement fluttered between them. Then it failed again and the oppressive weight of her pain and turmoil thumped down over top of them afresh. She put her back against the wall and hugged the pillow again. 

"It started on the Milano, on our way back to Earth. I thought...I thought it would go away. It did before, after...after it happened. When we got home and I still couldn't...when it was still hard to even touch food I figured, fine I'll drink lots of water and take supplements and it'll sort itself out and it didn't it didn't it just kept...on...it just stayed and stayed and I could feel I was getting weaker and weaker but I couldn't do anything about it--" 

"You could have told us," Bucky interrupted her, his voice sounding cold and hard even to him. He was remembering see her fall through his rifle scope, feeling the flare of panic and fear in his stomach, seeing and hearing the same thing on Steve's face even from that distance, in Clint's voice over the coms. 

"You would have tried to feed me!" she wailed and the tears came again. Bucky opened his mouth and felt Sam's hand on his arm, warning him _no_. He realized she was still speaking between gulps and sobs. 

"He force fed me! " she gasped out. "Once he bought some elaborate meal, pasta and wine and he chained me to the fucking table and when I wouldn't eat with him he force fed me with his bare hands--" her voice broke onto harsh panting, agony filling the room like perfume. "If any of you had done that I would--" 

"Buckwheat porridge," Bucky said loudly and clearly, cutting across her words. "My Ma, she used to make us--the kids--buckwheat porridge. We were poor and it was cheap but my Ma, oh boy. Little cinnamon and day old butter and some brown sugar and she could make that stuff taste like apple pie. When Steve was really sick, coughing blood, it was the only thing he could eat. Ma would send me over to the Rogers' place with a big bowl at least once a week. Too much for Steve--runt that he was--so we'd share it. One spoon, trading off. " He stopped for a moment, his throat tightening. "In Siberia they fed me buckwheat porridge. Well, him--the Soldier, you know. Cold and lumpy and congealed but he ate it because he remembered the time he'd refused it and they strapped him down and shoved a tube--" 

He broke off, choking. Sometimes he talked about his life as the Winter Solider in third person, like he was describing a movie happening. It made it feel less real. 

That particular memory was very real, though. It had been before the conditioning had fully taken and he--Bucky--had refused the porridge because he'd been trying to starve himself to death. To make the pain stop. 

Oh, that was why Sam had asked him to stay then....but how had he known? 

"I can't even stand to think about the stuff now," he heard himself say. "I still remember my Ma making it but they...they took it from me." 

"Oh, Buck," Bobbi whispered. "I'm so sorry." She sounded more like herself though, not trapped in the memories of her torment at Slade's hands. 

Sam stood up then and walked to the bed, sitting on the end. "Right now none of this is about you being sorry. It's about you getting better." 

There was a knock on the bedroom door. 

"Come in, Jemma," Sam said. "Jarvis, bring up the lights 10%." 

Jemma Simmons walked tentatively into the room. She was carrying a sealed package and large bottle of water. She actually gasped when she saw Bobbi, even in the dim lights. Bucky stood up as she came in and following her gaze he had to admit the blond woman looked even worse now after her frenzied weeping. Her hair was a rats nest, her eyes had huge dark shadows under them and her lips looked thin and bloodless. 

"Oh, Bobbi," Jemma murmured in distress, her sweet voice gentle and horrified at the same time. 

Bobbi clutched her pillow even harder and dropped her head again. 

"She got kicked in the stomach during the fight, Jemma, can you check it out?" Sam asked, drawing a nod from the English woman. "Bobbi, you try to sleep after she looks at you. Jemma's going to sit with you a bit, okay?" The silent addendum to that was "so you can't try self-harm or something". "But first--Jemma's got water and food. Can you try to eat something?" 

Bobbi gulped like she was going to throw up. "What...what is it?" 

Jemma held out the package, sealed in generic silver foil, about the size of a candy bar. "It's from the new batch of ration bars you made, this week. The ones you were checking the stability on?" 

Bobbi took it and ripped open one end. The scent of vanilla and lemon puffed out, strong enough for them all to smell. "Right, the new flavors." She looked up and actually managed a tiny, weak smile at Bucky. "Lemon meringue pie and New York Cheesecake this round but I'll start on an apple pie variant--" her face fell --"if I'm ever allowed out on my own again." 

"Not today that's for sure," Sam agreed comfortably. "Eat." 

She managed to choke down two bites of the bar before convulsively throwing it to the end of the bed. Bucky snagged it when it was clear she wasn't going to manage any more. Given that the bars were made to fuel a god and two super soldiers even those two bites would have enough calories to help her. The men left to the soft murmurs of Jemma's coaxing. Out in the living room, Bucky wolfed down the rest of the ration bar--it tasted amazing, sweet and tart and rich. 

“Sam,” he said as they walked to the elevator. “How’d you know I’d have something to share with her, like that?”

“Man, I hunted you with Nat and Steve for years. We found bases where they’d kept you. You think they didn’t have footage of that shit?” Sam responded, his eyes far away.

Bucky stopped abruptly, blood draining from his face. Same turned and look at him, with concern. “Did Steve see—”

“Nah, we never let him watch. He knew the gist of it but I’d never let him watch that shit. Hell, mostly I chased Nat out of the room too.” 

The elevator doors opened and they got on. “Black Widow’s floor,” Sam said, then continued, “It’s the reason I got over my mad on at you, for breaking my wings. You went through more in one of those “training” sessions than I could have survived for five minutes and they did it to you for decades.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said to the floor, his heart still racing. The elevators opened onto Black Widow’s ballet studio/living room and the sound of crying. 

This time it was Clint though, huddled on the floor next to the ballet barre—crying as hard as Bobbi had. Natasha had her arms wrapped around him, and she was murmuring soft words into his hair. She looked up with a despairing expression as the two men walked in.

Clint did too and hastily brushed at his face with a sleeve. Nat had gotten him out of his tac gear so he was wearing a frayed grey sweatshirt and sweat pants. They were too big for him and knuckling tears from his eyes he looked like toddler in his big brothers clothes. Still, the impression wasn’t that he was embarrassed to be seen crying but mostly that he knew they wanted to talk. 

Slowly, painfully, Clint got to his feet and they all sat down on the leather living room set. Sam explained briskly what had gone on in the Nest, and that Jemma was with Bobbi till she fell asleep. 

Nat sighed deeply to hear she’d eaten even a little. Clint was monosyllabic. Bucky held out a hand as Sam finished. 

“Um, I hate to be the one to suggest this but…maybe Jarvis should monitor her? She might…she might try to run away—I’m just saying! She’s not thinking right!” Bucky back pedalled at the look of pure vicious hatred Clint threw him. 

Nat shifted her weight and shook her head. “I already asked him to do that—Clinton you know he’s right. You know damn well it’s exactly the kind of stupid ‘noble’ idiocy she’d try.”

“I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t understand why she’d rather starve herself than—”

“He force fed her, man,” Sam interrupted Clint. “Slade. He force fed her with his bare hands, pasta, she just said to us.”

Clint stared at him. “Carbonara,” he breathed. “I made her dinner once, spaghetti carbonara and she looked at it like it was worms in dirt. I figured it was just ‘cause I was a bad cook and never made it again.” He buried his head in his hands. “Why didn’t she say something?”

“You wanna have a chat about Loki right now, maybe?” Sam said in a calm tone. Clint’s head jerked up, hurt and anger on his face—which faded as he took the meaning of the words. They all had at least one thing they never wanted to talk about.

What it felt like to fly through covering fire as your partner’s blood dried on your face…the feel of electrodes being pressed onto your skull, just the instant before they turned the juice on…the metal exam table in the freezing basement of a Siberian compound…the blue light dancing in your thoughts, stripping your will to bedrock and remaking you in another’s image.

Demons, ghosts, gods and monsters.

The life of an Avenger.

Sam nodded at him. “I gotta go read up on eating disorders, I’ll be on my floor. Guess emergency watch is on Thor and Tony tonight. Don’t…don’t let Steve in to see her, okay? Won’t do either of them any good.”

“If I may interject, Mr Wilson, Captain Rogers has left the Tower. He took his Harley and was headed to Agent Carter’s residence to stay the night,” Jarvis said crisply.

A very strange look ran around the group as they all realized they were _glad_ Steve Rogers was not around to deal with something. 

“Sam, do I have to stay away?” Clint asked, tentatively. 

Sam considered the idea. “Don’t yell at her. Don’t be angry. I know we’re all angry at her but now isn’t the time. You wanna go hold her, sit with her, good. Don’t talk about all this, just shut it down if she tries. She owes you an explanation but it’ll have to wait till after her life isn’t in danger, okay?”

“I’m going to come up, too, sleep in the spare bedroom. In case either of you need anything,” Natasha said, firmly. 

“Uh, can I join the slumber party? I might be useful if she tries to fight her way to freedom,” Bucky asked.

“Don’t try to feed her,” Sam said, looking at each of them. “That’s why she didn’t say anything. She was afraid we’d try to feed her and it would snap her back to that cabin, that she’d start thinking about us the way she thinks about _him_.”

Natasha looked appalled. “I’m no longer angry at her, hearing that. Of course.”

“I’m still pissed as hell,” Clint muttered. “But I get it. I get it.”

The four Avengers scattered, Clint back to the Nest, Sam to his own floor and research and Nat and Bucky to gather some clothes.

At the closet, Bucky paused to pull Natasha into his arms and let her rest, just a moment, without having to hold herself or anyone else up.

“We will help her get better, milli moy, if only so that we can all take turns yelling at her,” he said into her hair, silk and fire on his lips.

“I’m thinking of having that event catered,” she said back, holding him just a little tighter.


	2. The Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team sits down to discuss how to help Bobbi.
> 
> Bucky sticks his foot in his mouth.

Bucky didn't sleep much. Neither did Steve but it wasn't just the super soldier in him that made Bucky Barnes that way. 

Bucky didn't sleep much because he was always, constantly afraid that when he opened his eyes again it would be to the inside of his cryo-tube in Siberia. That his current life, finding Steve and Natasha again, becoming an Avenger, being declared a free man -- that it was all a dream, some sick manipulation by the his handlers to further break his spirit. 

Tonight he left Natasha once he could tell she was truly dreaming and wandered in the Barton's kitchen. He took a seat at the breakfast bar and turned on one of the hanging lights over the counter, soft warm glow in the dark apartment. The kitchen was ... not messy, or cluttered, but full. Full of things and full of life. There was a really really high class knife set next to the chopping block; leaning over and drawing the chef's knife he noticed it was perfectly balanced--to throw as well as cut. That made him smile. Of course it would be. The forks in the drawer were probably all weighted for throwing too. 

There was a Starktab mounted on the wall, looking like a permanent placement--it was marked with fingerprints and the tile next to it had food spots -- recipe book, he assumed. The counter also held a large digital scale, a big well-worn spice rack, a plethora of spoons and ladles and implements in a big ceramic vase and matching high-end heavy duty stand mixer and food processor. The cutting board was thick wood, immaculately clean. Pans hanging down from the wall were cast iron and big heavy non-stick. This was the kitchen of someone who knew how to cook, and loved it. 

There were also three separate coffee makers--no, one was a "TeaLady" so that must be for , well, tea. One of the coffee makers was heavy and expensive looking, the other a cheap department store model. That one was messily labeled "Clint's Dear God Don't Touch". He smiled, then turned to the fridge and poured himself a glass of pineapple juice from the container inside. He went back to his chair, then looked over into the darkness near the bedroom doors. Silently, he stared. 

Bobbi emerged into the edge of the light cast from the kitchen. She was fully dressed in jeans and a sweater but she was carrying her shoes in her hand. She had "making a break for it" written all over her. 

She looked at him with a pinched, unfriendly expression, then cut her gaze at the door. From where she was, she had a clear path; he was blocked by the side wall of the kitchen and the dining table in the open plan living space. 

"Go for it," he said, then took a swallow of his juice. "Not like the elevator's going to work for you." 

"There are overrides," she said, hoarsely. She sounded exactly like a someone who'd spent hours and hours crying before falling asleep. 

"You won't make it to them," he said. At full strength, armed and ready to maim or kill him, he actually thought she'd be a hard opponent to put down. Right now? He could probably restrain her like a kitten. 

Bobbi blew out a breath on a sigh. "Yeah, I know. It was worth a shot." 

"No it wasn't you incredible idiot," he responded. 

She dropped her shoes next to the wall and stalked into the kitchen, standing in the centre of the space, turning slowly. Her hands came out to the sides, her jaw grinding. Bucky finished his drink and rolled the glass in his palms, watching her. 

"I love it here," she burst out in a fierce whisper. They'd both been using hushed tones, so as not to wake Clint and Nat. "I love this kitchen--the first one I ever had that I could set up the way I liked it. Tony remodeled it for me, one Christmas. Clint and Nat took me to a high end kitchen store and we cleaned the place out. Clint and I made dinner that year, making out while fixing stuffing and cranberry sauce, kisses and mulled wine and the most perfect gravy I've ever made. I cried when I tasted it; Bruce lost his religion over it. Cooking is everything I love about biochem without the lab coats, creating and changing and _making_ something real that wasn't before. I love cooking. I love food." Her face crumpled, tears starting to slip down her cheeks. She mumbled something incoherent--he caught the words 'hate this' and 'done to me'--but couldn't manage anything else. 

Bucky stared for a moment, genuinely uncertain about what he should do. He thought maybe he should hug her--and then thought about why she was having her current problems and decided maybe being touched by a man wasn't what she needed. But letting her cry herself into a stupor in the kitchen wasn't a great idea either. 

Firmly he set his glass down on the counter, making a little ringing noise. That jarred her out of her funk. She looked up at him, breath catching in her chest on those dangerous hiccups. 

"If you actually want to leave--really and truly--I'll help you," he said. 

That totally threw her. She stared at him with an open mouth. 

"I," he continued. "I understand...about feeling....trapped. If you think the best way to deal with your problem is to leave, I'll get you out of the Tower." He cocked his head. "Do you really want to leave?" 

She closed her mouth with a click. "Well. No, actually. I don't _want_ to leave. I just don't want to..." She stopped and looked away. "I don't want to hurt anyone anymore. Except maybe myself." 

"Yeah," he drawled. "Cause if you take off everyone will just dust their hands and say 'good riddance'." 

She smiled at that, a little flicker of an expression that was gone in a breath. But her body language, all tense and spikey, relaxed with it. 

"Wanna watch a movie?" he asked, gesturing at the living room area next to the (currently blacked out) picture windows. 

"I..." she snuffled, wiping her face with her sleeves, "yeah, actually. I do." 

A few hours later Nat and Clint found them in the living room with the TV showing some frenetic action movie, Bobbi in the big overstuffed armchair she had claimed as hers long ago, Bucky sprawled across the couch, both dozing and peaceful looking. 

Clint made pancakes. No one commented on the fact that Bobbi didn't touch them. 

*****

“We’re really doing this without Steve?” Bruce asked in a worried voice as he looked around the ‘casual’ board room. It was the one on the public floor, not the special “Assembly” room they used for team meetings.

Sam—writing on the white board—looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, I called him at Sharon’s and he was still…twisted up. He dropped the phone and walked out of the room at one point. I’ll loop him in after. This isn’t Avengers business, anyway. This is…this is family. He doesn’t have to be the stoic leader right now. He’s allowed to be pissed off.” 

Clint, staring out the window, glanced at him and smiled at that.

Thor nodded from his chair. “Lady Bobbi is greatly troubled. Let us comfort her as kin before we consider her as shieldmates.” 

Tony and Natasha walked in, talking in a low voices. Rhodey trailed in behind them, looking worried and serious. 

“James is staying with her,” Natasha said to Sam as she took her seat. The men all sat down and everyone studied the board. “He told us she tried to leave the Tower last night because, I quote ‘she didn’t want to hurt anyone else, except maybe herself.’ So, self-harm watch now too.”

Sam ran a hand across his face, then turned to the white board.

Neatly printed across the surface in blue was the following:

Type of ED

Common Treatments

The Plan

1  
2  
3  
4

Questions

Sam tapped the first line with his pen.

“Right, so Bobbi’s exhibiting a mixed disorder. She’s not bulimic—she couldn’t have hidden that. She got a version of anorexia mixed with ARFID — avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. That’s a new definition, not clinical. Technically it’d be called PTSD induced ED-NOS. Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.”

“That’s the worst acronym since SHIELD,” Tony muttered. 

“The form it takes is she can’t—Clint, Nat, correct me if I’m wrong here cause I think you’re the only people she’s actually talked to about this—she can’t eat food that anyone else has touched, before or after preparation.” He looked at them. They both nodded. 

“Okay,” Sam continued. “So this is bad but we have a few advantages. She’s not a fifteen year old in denial, for starters. We don’t have to fight her to get her to acknowledge that she’s hurting. She’s not doing this because of weight issues or body dimorphism or self-image. She’s doing this because her past trauma included being drugged and force fed. Anyone remember the last time they SAW her eating?”

Bruce nodded. “Family meal last week.” At least once a week, barring world threatening events, the Avengers ate dinner to together. Like a restaurant they called it “family meal”; Bobbi and lately Bucky, being the best cooks on the team, usually prepared it but everyone took a turn. 

Sam pointed the pen at him. “Right. And she made that whole meal from scratch. That control, of ingredients and preparation, that allowed her to eat the food. She didn’t eat a lot, but she ate and she didn’t hesitate or act weird. Some of that it her being a expert liar but some of it was that she felt safe enough, with us, in that situation, to eat food.” 

“She’s been subsisting on protein bars and junk,” Clint said quietly. He was uncharacteristically subdued, still obviously heartsick and hurting. “Stuff that’s heavily packaged and processed. And even then, last month she could barely eat that. Or so she says.”

Sam sighed and nodded. “Treatment for this kind of disorder usually starts with psychoanalysis but well, none of us are qualified and I don’t think it’s what she needs. She’s not denying it’s a problem, and we know WHY it’s a problem. So the other common treatment branch is the Maudsley Method. The focus there is refeeding, calorie management and returning control to the subject. Interrupting the spiral at the moment of the trigger; interrupting compensatory behaviour.”

Sam’s voice was crisp and professional, as much in his element here as he was in the sky. Clint, listening intently, had a pitifully thankful air about him. Natasha was nodding firmly and the rest of the team followed her lead. 

“So, The Plan starts here. Step One: we get her to feed us all…”

*****

In the Nest, Bucky had made himself comfortable on the living room couch again. Bobbi was curled up in “her” chair, her ludicrously overpowered Starktab in her lap. Bucky originally thought she was playing a game but his occasion glance over made him realize the colourful spheres and connecting lines on the screen were actually something else.

“What the hell are you doing, anyway?” He asked, muting the sound on the ball game.

“Organic chemistry,” she said shortly, not looking up. “The molecular structure of cinnamon aromatics are grossly over reactive; trying to figure out how to stabilize them in compound. For apple pie flavouring.”

“Bozhe moi,” he muttered. “You, Banner, Stark. This team is more think-tank than combat outfit.”

That did make her look up, grinning. “Well three out of nine isn’t precisely an overwhelming percentage, sport. And the three of us have other skills. I myself give excellent back rubs.”

Bucky shook his head, reaching for the remote again. “I have no idea why a woman with your brain would waste her time fighting the clowns we go up against.”

The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. Bucky released the remote again and looked back at her.

The expression on her face was blank and still. 

He knew her just well enough to know that was the look she got right before she throttled someone. He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “What? What did I do?”

“I punched Stark in the face for saying that to me,” she half-whispered. “Consider yourself lucky I’m so weak; I’d be trying to break your arm right now. Your metal arm.”

“Saying what?”

“That I’m somehow wasting myself, my brain, being an Avenger and not safe in a lab somewhere like a good little girl,” she replied, still in that silky, dangerous monotone. 

“I didn’t mean that I meant—” Bucky stopped in confusion because, well, that was what he meant. But if he said that out-loud there would be blood on the walls. 

She eyed him like a bug, her tone cold. “Let me ask you this, _Barnes_ ”—and that hurt a little as he’d been Bucky, spoken in a cheerful happy voice, since the Kree ship rescue—”if Stark or Banner were here, would you have said that to them?” She sneered the last at him, clearly expressing that she knew the answer was ‘no’ and went back to her work.

Bucky turned the volume on the game back up, staring at the TV without seeing it. After two innings he suddenly turned the game off. She glanced up, still disdainful.

“Yeah, I get it. That was…I was being a cad, there.”

“Cad?” 

“What? I spent a lot of time in England during the war.”

“Accepted. Go on.”

“Nothing more to say. Just, sorry.”

She sighed. “Sorry is fine but rather than that maybe think a minute that I do this because I…I love it? But also because I…I have a duty, right? There are plenty great scientists in the world who can sit in labs but not so many who can fight off three mutated badgers while shouting out targeting info for two snipers using two different weapons.”

“That was fun.”

“It was wasn’t it?” She actually smiled, just a little. “I do this because I can when others can’t, yeah but I also do it because…because I have as much right to chose to be a hero as any man out there. But for some reason, everyone STILL thinks women only get into this business for vengeance or by accident. No one thinks we want to risk the sacrifice as much as any of you guys do. That we feel the same sense of duty.”

“I know. I know. I am sorry,” he said, earnestly. 

She studied him a moment. “Okay. I accept your apology and I have a peace offering.” She stood up and walked towards the kitchen, gesturing for him to follow. He did, curious.

Hooking a step stool from under the counter top, Bobbi shoved it with her foot to the base of the fridge. She climbed up and stretched until she could reach the top shelf in the cupboard above it, right at the top and back. 

She came down with a red, white, orange and blue plastic bag that crinkled loudly. Pulling a bowl out of the cupboard she opened the bag and poured a mass of orange into the bowl. Then she threw him the bag.

“Hawkins Cheezies?” He read on the package. As he watched, she took one of the orange objects out of the bowl and bit into it. It crunched loudly. 

“Yup,” she slurred around her mouthful. “Literally the best salty snack ever made.”

Bucky took one of the hard, knobbly cheezies out of the bag. It smelled of salt and processed cheese. He popped it into his mouth. 

His eyes rolled back at the taste, cornmeal and salt and fake cheddar and heaven. “Where the living hell did you get these?”

“Vindicator sends’em to me when she can. Only available in Canada. I think the secret ingredient is crack.” She chewed slowly, with savour. “This is the last of my stash. I’ve been living off them the last month or so.” 

Bucky mused as to what that might mean, her admitting to that. But he kept eating. “Canadians. They have a special touch with stuff like this. Other stuff, too. I remember, during the war, we got pinned down next to this frozen river, the Commandos and a ton of civilians and walking wounded. Hydra fire team kept us from crossing, anyone on the ice was too open, to visible, for too long. Turns out there was a division of Canadian infantry just on the other side of the river and a bunch of them were from the same town in Ontario. No one could walk across but those bastards had ice skates with them. For hockey games. Half dozen sharpshooters and four of the best cold weather scouts I’ve ever met just suddenly pop up next to the miserable barn we’re sheltering in. Seems like they’d timed the Hydra watch schedule and there was a long enough window that guys on skates could make it across. Me, Steve and couple Commandos go out with the shooters, lay down covering fire. Those scouts walked out into the snowy fields and just vanished. Then we hear a ruckus and next thing we know, the Hydra encampment is up in flames.” He paused. “Two of the Canadians didn't make it out. Saved about a hundred civilians and fifty wounded though; they’d have frozen to death without that rescue.”

Bobbi, who’d stopped chewing to listen to him, nodded. “Steve told a version of that story once. He talked about what a bad ass you were, as well as the Canadians.” She smiled at his shy head duck, and slowly ate two more of the crunchy, brilliant orange treats. 

“Here,” he said, stepping forward to pour some of the bag in his hand into her bowl. “You need these more—”

“ _Don’t!_ ” she screamed, flinching away. “If you do that I won’t be able to eat any of them!”

Bucky stumbled back from her, dropping the bag on the counter reflexively. “Oh, fuck I’m so sorry—”

“It’s…it’s okay,” she said, shuddering a little. She held up her free hand, fingers coated in cheddar dust. “Thank you for trying.” 

Putting down her bowl, Bobbi sighed and stared at him. “Do you think whatever they’re talking about down there will…do you think it’ll help? To fix me?” She sounded plaintive and nearly childish, a stark contrast to her cool commanding demeanour earlier.

Bucky picked up the bag again, feeling the plastic crinkle in his metal hand. “I think…they won’t stop trying till the figure out the right way to get you back to yourself. That’s what family is for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hawkins Cheezies are the best. Chester the Cheetah secretly eats them on his breaks, they are that good.


	3. Prep Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi goes shopping, Steve just came to talk and Hawkeye is done mincing words.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Clint asked anxiously through the coms. 

He was stationed on the building across the street from the twenty four hour grocery store, watching as he did best. Natasha was at the back door, Sam in the parking lot and Bucky lurked in the magazine aisle. 

Bobbi—sans ear piece—was making her slow, halting way through the produce section, picking listlessly at onions and peppers. She’d been in the store for thirty minutes and had barely moved. She flinched every time someone came near her. Didn’t happen much as the store was mostly empty at eleven PM on a Tuesday night. 

“It’s the best idea I could come up with, under the circumstances, but this isn’t something I’ve dealt with before,” Sam said, infinitely patient. 

“Yeah, I just—shit,” Clint snapped, his voice rising in volume. “Incoming.”

“Where?” Snapped Bucky. “Who?”

“Not an enemy. Worse,” Clint said ruefully. 

A Harley pulled into the parking lot and parked neatly in a spot close to the door. The man riding it wore no helmet—his golden hair glowed in the cheap neon of the store sign. 

Before Sam could cross the pavement, or Bucky move from his spot, Steve Rogers stepped off the bike, entered the store and headed straight for Bobbi.

*****

Bobbi looked up and saw him and the fear in her eyes nearly stopped his heart. But other than the slightest hitch in his step he continued until he was standing in front of her. She studied him, then began to search the room over his shoulder, to her sides. Checking all the sight lines. Without speaking to him.

“What,” he finally broke down and asked, “are you doing?”

“Looking for your trigger man,” she said simply.

He put two and two together and made an exasperated noise. “Sharon’s at her place. She doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”

“Shooting me in the back of the head isn’t a conversation,” she replied. 

“She wouldn’t—” and then he stopped because she probably would if he asked her to and wasn’t that a frightening thought? He sighed and opened his hand to Bobbi. “She’s not here.”

“Okay. Why are you?”

“Because—”and now he turned his head and glared at Bucky, edging his way around one of the end displays. The Winter Soldier backed off, scowling. “Because if Sam wasn’t lying to me about what was going on, Natasha was. Bucky and Clint were avoiding me. Tony was pretending nothing was wrong, Thor just kept saying it was not his place and Bruce polished his glasses until he broke a lens. The only person I wanted to talk to was you and you’re…”

“Slowly killing myself?” she responded brightly, then leaned over and carefully selected several onions, placing them in a bag and then in the cart. She pushed the cart forward, moving towards the bean sprouts and cilantro. Steve trailed behind her, watching her place those items, then scallions, garlic, limes and a dozen carefully chosen birdseye red chilies. 

She started towards the meat.

“Bobbi,” he said softly. “I’m here, now, because…because no matter how empty this store is, it’s a public place and I can’t scream at you here. I want to, but I can’t.”

“I deserve it,” she said softly. 

“Do you?” He responded bitterly, stopping her in her tracks. She eyed him over her shoulder, serious and sad. 

“If I don’t, then who does?” 

“Me,” he responded, matching her demeanour. 

She turned and looked at him fully, her hands coming up to her hips, her cart rolling to a gently bump-stop against a cured meat display. “What. The. Actual. Fuck. Do. You. Mean?”

“A break down of trust in a unit is the fault of the commander. Me. My fault, my responsibility. If you could have trusted me, you could have told me what was wrong—”

“Do you, you arrogant child, actually think that I trust you more than I trust, oh, CLINT?” She hissed at him, her face still and dead under eyes that flashed with rage.

Steve remembered then that subjectively she was about a decade older than him and had lived through easily as much trauma as he had. She was so quick to defer to him, so obviously respectful under her veneer of cheerful mockery it was easy to forget this was a battle hardened warrior in her own right.

“You are my sibling, Steve. I adore you. If I crave anyone’s approval it’s yours. You are NOT my primary confidante or secret-keeper or just keeper at all. I love you like a brother…like a LITTLE brother. If I was going to tell anyone about this…this debacle…it would have been Sam. And that is obviously the correct choice from that fact that I am in this damn super market, shopping for ingredients for a team dinner that I am going to cook. AND eat. Even just last week I couldn’t have walked into this store; couldn’t have touched this stuff.”

He couldn’t process all that right now, his mind and gut still roiling with fear and anger. He pressed on with his planned speech. “It’s still my fault, Bobbi. That the trust within the team got this…this broken—”

“That is the stupidest thing you’ve said to me and you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars movie.” She grabbed the cart again firmly and pointed her chin at the chicken, laid out like sacrifices on a refrigerated altar. He followed her, watching her fingers glide through the air above the trays, looking for the ones she felt were acceptable to her instincts as a cook and her mental distress. “Let’s just set aside that in the time since I developed my…since my eating disordered flared up again we’ve saved thousands of lives, put down several villains. Done charity work. Trained. Hung out. Laughed and fought. Made love and made war. You think I got like this because the TEAM is broken?”

She reached out her hands and selected five trays of chicken thighs and three of breasts. Her voice was soft and quiet, her sincerity overwhelming.

“Steve, without the team, without you, this thing would have destroyed me. Would have—heh—eaten my alive a decade ago, or five years ago, or when I got sent to the Flash’s universe, or this summer. The team stopped this from killing me. Over and over. And okay, this time it was triggered so badly, by so many separate factors all at once that I couldn’t fight it off on my own. And guess who figured that out, plus how to help me—when I can hardly go for help like a civilian? The Avengers did. In the midst of saving the world the team—that Tony built and you lead—that team said “hey, you are worth saving. You are worth the time and pain and trouble to fix. You are not alone.”

Her mouth folded into a smile like an origami swan. “The team SAVED me you big, beautiful idiot. The team isn’t broken, Steve. Part of my brain is.”

She met his gaze firmly, without shame. His shoulders relaxed a little and he rubbed the back of his neck, on the little raised callus that his cowl had caused over the years. “You owe Clint one hell of an apology, you know,” he said, nearly sheepish now. 

Bobbi rolled her eyes. “Oh, we have a complicated schedule of reparations already worked out. When you move back to the Tower, break out the earplugs I bought you for Christmas.”

He smiled at that, even as he blushed just a little. 

Steve followed her silently through the store, shaking off both Bucky and Sam when they tried to approach. He watched her choose peanuts, tamarind paste, cartons of organic chicken stock. Prawns. Tofu. When they got to the noodles he finally twigged what she was making.

“Pad Thai? You’re making your Pad Thai?” Despite everything there was a plaintive note in his voice. He LOVED her Pad Thai. 

“Yeah, tomorrow night. Come to dinner,” Bobbi smiled at him, with that sardonic quirk of hers. “Bring Sharon. Might as well have the full greek chorus of pissed off present at the same time.”

*****

Bobbi stood at her cutting board with her best paring knife and rubber gloves on. She was methodically seeding and dicing the chilis she’d bought for the noodle dish. Sealed containers of chicken strips, deveined prawns, cubed tofu and chopped vegetables rested in the fridge. This was her last item to prep.

The razor sharp blade of the small knife, the natural wooden grip worn and stained in the exact pattern of her small strong fingers, was custom made by Tony. Her entire knife set was either constructed by him or modified to perfectly fit her hand. He’d loved the challenge, spending hours watching her cook, taking measurements and scans. 

Steel flashed like a strobe light as she finished scraping the seeds out of the last chilli and started her chopping in earnest. The blade tapped against the surface with clockwork precision.

“That sounds like a wood pecker,” said Clint from the doorway.

Looking over her shoulder, hands still moving in a precise blur, she smiled at him a little wanly. “I think we now have proof I’m not up to my own standard because I can’t even think of a dirty joke to make to that.”

Clint advanced into his usual position when she was cutting, standing behind her with his arms draped over her hips, chin on her shoulder. “How’d your little talk with Steve go?”

“Idiot boy wanted this whole thing to be his fault. He and Daredevil should have a Catholic guilt-off for charity,” she muttered.

Silently, Clint watched her finish chopping and scrape the diced chilli into a container. She carefully sealed it up, then instantly plunged the chopping board into the sink of warm soapy water she had ready. After a scrub and rinse, she set it to dry and peeled her rubber gloves off, discarding them in sink, then washing her hands for a full minute in hot water. Clint leaned against the counter and looked at her warily. 

Early in their marriage there had been an incident where he’d grabbed her gloved hands and kissed them before she could warn him off. He’d spent the next two hours soaking his mouth in a container of milk while Bobbi cheerfully tortured him by describing what would have happened if he’d, say, thrust her hands down his pants. 

Freshly rinsed, Bobbi raised her fingers to her mouth and licked them in full few. When she didn’t fall over weeping, Clint relaxed. 

Despite indulging in their long standing joke ritual there was still tension in the air between them and it flowered now, as Bobbi turned from placing the container in the fridge. She squinted at the floor, then at him. “Maybe don’t go into the fridge till I start cooking everything tomorrow? So you don’t…um…touch anything?”

“Yeah,” Clint said, nodding without looking at her. They stood awkwardly in the kitchen a few feet and several hundred miles apart until Bobbi finally stomped her foot against the tile. Since she was wearing fuzzy purple slippers it was not precisely impressive but it did catch Clint’s attention.

“Out with it,” she said briskly. “Get it out. You need to say it and I need to hear it and we need to talk about it. Lance the boil, Clint. Speak your poison.”

He stared at her a long time, his clear blue eyes searching her face. “Do you want to die?” He said finally. His voice was flat and without emotion. 

“I did,” she responded with the same energy. “Back on the Kree ship. I wanted to die more than I wanted to fight. That was the first time I’d ever felt like that.”

“If you have a death wish,” he ground on, his voice very small and words very precisely chosen, “then we have to leave the team. You can’t do this—”his gesture swept across his body, indicating the whole of their apartment and by extension the Tower and the Avengers themselves—”if you have a death wish. I won’t let you.”

Normally that phrase would have put Bobbi’s back up so high she would be climbing the walls. Today she just stood still, lips pressed together on an obvious tremble.

“I will drag you kicking and screaming out of here if I have to. I will take you some place with no phones and no roads and no way out and we’ll live in a tent before I will let you try to kill yourself again,” Clint continued, affectless, emotionless. “I will burn my arrows and never touch a bow again if that’s what it takes. But I won’t live through realizing my wife—my soul—would rather be dead than be with me.”

“I would rather be dead than be used as a weapon against you,” she shot back at him, the first sign of emotion in the whole debate. 

“Too. Fucking. Late.” 

They glared at each other, standing rigid and fist-clenched like mirror images.

“I don’t want to die…any more. I swear to you, I don’t want to die,” Bobbi finally. “I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to starve myself and I don’t want to die.”

“Okay.” Clint took a slow step towards her, his hands lifting from his sides. “I said forever when we got married. I haven’t had forever yet.”

Bobbi broke like an ancient wall hit by a bulldozer, all at once. He caught her as she crumpled and they sat sprawled on their kitchen floor, the air scented with garlic and peanuts and onion, both crying as though their hearts were breaking. 

Eventually Bobbi wiped her face on his shirt and blinked up at him. “You’re mean, you know.”

“I was provoked,” he snuffled. 

“I think it’s time we looped Natasha in on the…theory. If nothing else, this whole debacle makes the need for it pretty clear and present,” she said, getting up and then hauling him with her. Despite everything, Clint grinned. He adored it when she showed off her physical strength casually. “If you’re still okay with it?”

Clint snagged a box of tissues and blew his nose. “What part of ‘Well, I am bisexual’ was the sticking point for you?”

“It’s not the sexuality, its the guy,” she said, poking him in the ribs. 

“We’re not best buddies yet, nah. But he makes Nat happy. He makes Steve happy. And he’s…he’s a good shot.” 

“Well, gosh, say no more!” Bobbi declaimed dramatically, then cocked her head. “It might take a bit of work to get him up to the gate, so to speak.”

“Yeah, but it’ll give us something to do while you’re paying off your ‘I’m a total dumbass’ debt to me. And Nat’ll help; idea’s half because of her hinting after all.” He tucked a hand behind her neck, pulling her into his body gently but inexorably. 

Bobbi nodded. “First I fix my head, then we go after the target.”

“Agreed.”

Her hands, resting on his hips, slid lower and inward. “I’m still kinda low energy but I think I can manage a down payment on the first instalment of what I owe you.”

Clint shivered and arched his back a little, thrusting his groin against her hands. “I’m willing to open the bank after hours for you.”

“Oh, I was thinking more about you making the deposit.”


	4. Dinner Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mockingbird cooks.
> 
> The team eats.

Steve and Sharon stepped out of the private elevator into the Nest’s atrium. The front door slide open as they approached, releasing a burst of happy voices like steam from a kettle. 

For Steve it also released an intoxicating swirl of scents: the heavy sweetness of peanut sauce, the bright high notes of lemongrass and ginger, the salt of soy. Other smells: baked bread, mashed potatoes. Pecan pie and a dreadfully appealing (yet fake) cheddar scent.

That explained Bucky’s flying trip to the Canadian border then.

Sharon huffed out a breath and shook her head. “I’m not sure this is the best idea, Steve. I’m still furious with her.”

“I am too,” Steve acknowledged. “But she knows that and…it’s not going to get BETTER huddled at your apartment brooding. Besides, I am going to have to move back here in a night or two.” He smiled at her apologetically. They were enjoying playing house but he was itchy being even a few minutes away from the armory and quinjet. Besides that, he felt like he was pinning a target to Sharon’s back. And her neighbors.

Clint wandered into view at the end of the short hall, obviously checking why the door had opened. He waved vaguely at them and turned back to the main room, which was open plan to the kitchen.

Steve shed Sharon into the living room, crowded with super humans. He poked his head around the breakfast nook wall and took  
a quick stock of the room.

Bobbi was cooking with the same fierce intensity he was used to seeing her fight with, dredging noodles out of pots, tossing them with sauce, dousing things in various liquids.

She looked happier than he’d seen her in days. Weeks maybe. 

Clint leaned on the counter well out of the splash/stab range, watching her. Sam was doing the same. Neither of them seemed to carry any tension. He inserted himself into the couple square feet of tile that seemed like safe space. 

“I have Hanna’s ginger beer,” he said, holding out a cloth bag with four clinking bottles in it. It was real home made Jamaican ginger beer, produced by a family business in Brooklyn. It was also Bobbi’s favorite soft drink and spicy enough to blow the top of your head off if you weren’t prepared. 

“Where were you thirty minutes ago, you piker I coulda added that to the sauce!” Bobbi snarled at him without looking over.

Clint took the bag from his hand, took out one bottle and set it on the back counter, then stuck the other three into the quick chiller. Bobbi twisted off the cap of the bottle next to her, took a swig and set it down again without breaking her rhythm.

Steve felt absurdly proud and doubly so when Sam grinned and nodded at him.

“Dinner’s up in fifteen, get out of the combat zone till then,” he said and Steve retreated in good order. 

*****

At the dinner table a routine was established from the first course. Bobbi would bring out all the various dishes (there were a couple of variations of everything she made, with varying amounts of spice or other controversial ingredients). Clint was the only person allowed to touch or assist with any of those plates. If someone else had brought an item they were allowed to place it on the table. 

She would then serve herself, taking an amount of everything presented. Sometimes she moved VERY slowly but it always wound up on her plate.

Then everyone else would serve themselves. They would eat and chat and not mention that everyone was pacing themselves so that Bobbi was never the last one eating, no matter how long it took her to touch something. 

The main course, the huge platters of fragrant, astonishing Pad Thai were cleaned to the porcelain and Bobbi herself ate a large amount, garnished with chicken and prawns and extra chilis. Thor ate most of one whole dish himself, exclaiming thunderously about its magnificence. 

Bucky and Steve took down another between them and everyone else shared the last. That course had the least talking and the most rapturous exclamations. 

As the last length of noodle was dragged through the last puddle of peanut sauce, Bobbi tapped the edge of her glass.

“That mean we have to kiss now, little bird?” Clint said brightly and got stabbed with a fork by Natasha.

Bobbi smiled at him but her eyes were wary and her jaw tense.

“Um, so. Right. Jarvis could you throw up that display I was talking about?”

“Of course, Mockingbird,” the AI said in his smooth, kindly voice.

A graph appeared in the air above the table. It had the date on it, then a line marked ‘target calories’ and a few smaller displays with ‘carbs’ ‘protein’ ‘micronutrients’ written on it.

All of the little lines were a happy green color.

Bobbi gestured at it. “That’s me, what I’ve eaten in the last twenty four hours. That’s not self-reported; Bruce and I put a reader patch on my neck today.” She pulled her hair back to show a small silver square adhered to the side of her throat. “Sam and I did a consult with Dr Strange AND Claire Temple AND Jemma in London. We worked out a sliding scale for my calorie intake until I get back to normal. We’re not rushing it but it’s a steady increase. The results are all on an app that is now on all your phones. And Jemma’s too and trust me she is PISSED at me. She’d be back here yelling at me right now but for Lance needing her urgently. Thank FUCK.”

That got a laugh. Jemma Simmons angry was not fun to face.

“In any case,” Bobbi continued. “If I start back sliding or things start screwing up I can’t hide. It’s all here.” She took a deep breath. “You aren’t responsible for me, but I am accountable to you. I can’t shut this off except by pulling the patch and that triggers an alarm.”

She paused, looking down at her plate, then looked up again. One by one, she met each of their eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said softly to each person in turn, quiet, calm, no flinching. 

One by one they all nodded, or exclaimed, or assured her that she didn’t need to be sorry.

Save for Steve, who said nothing, his eyes hard and cold. They stared at each other for a long time and had some wordless conversation that none of the others, not even Bucky or Clint could hear.

Then she and Clint got up and went to fetch the pie and ice cream. Sharon trailed after them a second later.

There was long pause, where in both Steve and Bucky cocked their heads and looked, in turn, intrigued, appalled, and then went white-faced.

From the kitchen the words: “Jesus fucking christ!” Rang out in a Barton duet. 

Then Sharon came back into the dining room with a red flush to her cheek and a firm set to her mouth. She looked at Steve with cool nonchalance and slid back into her place without explaining. 

When the Barton’s made it back to the table with the pecan pie and vanilla ice cream neither of them would look straight at her.

*****

After dessert and drinks, Bobbi went to wash the serving dishes and a few pots. They were fragile, no-dishwasher things she’d bought on a whim or just because they were pretty, or been sent from the Philippines by her guru’s family—she kept in touch with them, sending money sometimes. 

She reached out for the drying cloth without looking and instead encountered a metal hand that plucked the platter she was holding out of her grip. She looked up and smiled at Bucky, who was already drying the dish with narrow-eyed intensity. They worked well together and everything was stowed in the cupboards in about half her usual time. 

As Bobbi turned off the water in the sink she was struck by how quiet the Nest was. She’d known Tony and Bruce and Thor were leaving soon, she thought the others would have stuck around…

The panic and terror she’d been suppressing all meal flared up; the confrontation with Sharon had percolated the whole mess to just under the surface of her carefully constructed mask of normalcy. Shouldering Bucky aside, she hurtled into the living room, despite the fact she could see most of it from the breakfast bar cut out. 

“Where? Where?” She gasped, not really aware she was speaking aloud, feeling the meal sitting in her stomach like a pile of rocks churn. She spun in the empty room, imaging it being that way forever, she was alone, alone, alone like she’d been in the jungle when Shield fell…it was so bright, bright and empty like the room she’d been held in when AIM was torturing her…(1)

…there was a crash and saw that one of the table lamps now lay shattered against the wall and it was blessedly darker and she lunged for the next lamp.

Bucky snagged her around the waist with both arms, dragging her back from stomping on the pile of broken glass and ceramics with her bare feet.

“Mockingbird!” He snarled into her ear. “Mockingbird, are you in there?”

She kicked and shrieked in his grip, stuttering incoherent syllables.

No, Bobbi kicked and shrieked.

The next second Mockingbird rose up and took hold of her shaking vocal chords long enough to answer Bucky. 

“D-d-d-d-d-d-dark. Need someplace dark, no light, please the l-l-l-l-l-l-light is trying to eat her brain please need some darkness!”

*****

Two floors down and twenty minutes earlier, in Natasha’s living room had gathered Clint, Nat, Sam and Steve. Sharon had gone down to Steve’s floor to collapse on the bed, they were staying at the Tower tonight.

Clint, barefoot and relaxed, was doing one arm pull ups from the floor on Natasha’s barre. 

“That went well,” Natasha said brightly as she poured out little cups of hot tea for them all. 

“Yeah, it did actually,” Sam agreed. “The whole thing with the calorie counter was her idea, too. I’ve been asking around on line and the consensus seems to be this is the right track we’re on.”

“Why do I feel that only means we’re due for a set back now?” Steve said in a dry voice.

They all paused, waiting for the sky to fall. It didn’t, so the conversation continued.

Sam waved a hand around the room. “I just wanted to touch base with you all about the next step in the plan. She needs to get back into fighting shape—we all know having Mock on the DL is a huge cramp in everyone’s plans—but I’m concerned it might trigger ‘workout anorexia’.”

“Which is?” Clint asked, leaving the barre to plop down heavily next to Natasha on the love seat, throwing his legs over her lap.

“She’ll workout till she’s burning more calories than she takes in, or starts to throw up. And it might happen unconsciously. So watch for it.” He drank his own tea with relish. “The app will help though. It accounts for calories burned too.”

They chatted a few more minutes, Steve laying out what he needed from the plan as team leader, aside from his personal wishes.

“By the way, what’d Sharon say to her in the kitchen?” Sam asked Clint as the archer got up and snagged another small sugar laden cup of the strong smokey tea and downed it. 

Clint looked at Steve over the rim of his cup, who nodded.

“She said if Bobbi ever made himself over there cry again she’d tape it and make her watch,” Clint supplied.

There was another breathless pause.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Sam and Nat said at the same time.

Steve gave a hard, rueful laugh. “It felt pretty awful from the inside I can’t image what it looked like from the outside.”

“Avengers, I believe Sargent Barnes may need some assistance upstairs,” Jarvis broke in smoothly. “Mrs Barton appears to be having a severe panic attack.”

Clint was already at the emergency stairs, the door rebounding off the wall. Steve was hot on his heels. Nat and Sam grabbed the elevator.

In the Nest, they found the clean kitchen and the smashed lamp but no Bucky or Bobbi. Then Clint twitched and lead them all into the main bedroom. All the lights were off and the floor to ceiling windows were set to “total opaque” mode. The door to the en suite was 99% closed but they could all hear a voice through the crack.

“…no, no I get it. I can’t stand cold now. Not even a little. I put up with it when I have to but if I sit on cold cement or something it feels like it’s eating its way up my spine.” That was Bucky, his voice almost pure American for once, and his tone was both firm and kind.

Bobbi answered. “Yes, gods, it’s like the light is a p-p-p-predator and it’s going to attack me. I haven’t had an episode like this in years, years. I’m so…I’m so ssssssorry, Bucky, I’m so ssssorry.” She was nearly babbling, her stutter suppressed but just on the edge of audible.

“It’s okay, really. I mean it’s your lamp you broke, you didn’t throw up or hurt yourself and they’re all outside now so Clint can _get the damn blindfold_ you said you had,” Bucky reassured her, his volume rising on the phrase.

Clint spun on one heel and dove for the nearest bedside table, popping open a fingerprint locked drawer at the bottom. He pulled out a set of expensive leather buckled cuffs with d-rings, a small paddle (discarding those items on the table top) and then a thick wide blindfold that looked custom molded. 

Holding it out, he advanced on the door. “Little bird, I’m coming in with the blind fold. There’s a little light out here so squeeze your eyes real shut.”

Sam gently swung the bathroom door open. In the faint light from the living room they could see the Winter Solider leaning against the sink vanity. Bobbi was in his lap, her back to his chest and his metal hand was curved firmly across her eyes. His other arm encircled her waist. 

Clint advanced in and hunched over them, holding out the blindfold till it nearly touched the metal. “On three, one two three—”

They did a quick switch, metal for cloth.

Everything paused for a second and then Bobbi spoke. “That…that’s better. Thank you so much.” Her voice was pitifully tired and sad. 

“Lemme tag in here, buddy. I’ve got her now,” Clint said to Bucky, already lacing his hands under Bobbi’s arms.

For just a moment, Bucky seemed reluctant to let her go, then released her into Clint’s care. 

The rest of them left the Bartons lying on their bed in the pitch black room and retreated into the living area. 

Bucky turned to the others. “She flipped out, broke that lamp and then said she needed to get away from all the light. Did I do right there?”

Oddly he wasn’t was speaking to Steve, or even Natasha. He was asking Sam.

Sam nodded firmly. “You did good, ice cube. Good save.” Bucky visibly relaxed and threw his human arm over Natasha’s shoulder. She gave him a squeeze, then disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with a trash can and small vacuum. She cleaned up the shattered lamp and disposed of it carefully. Then she looked up. 

“We’ll stay up here again, tonight, though I’m not worried about her trying to leave. This…when she has attacks like this it immobilizes her for about a day. I just want to be close in case Clint needs us.”

“You seem to be getting good at helping her, Buck,” Steve said softly, clasping him on the shoulder. “Thank heaven for that.”

Sam nodded approval. “No matter what, tonight was a good night. She did good, we did good. It’s not going to be some smooth upward climb, all right? She’ll have set backs and relapses and all that funky shit. We. Did. Good. YOU did great, ice cube, despite your brain being nearly as broken.” He said, ending on a grin.

Bucky almost gave him the finger then visibly stopped himself.

Natasha kicked him in the shin.

Steve and Sam left together, Sam limping and clutching an utterly unsympathetic Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Mockingbird’s issues with light when severly stressed are documented in “Mockingbird: The Wilderness Years” in the Mockingverse timeline. It’s part of her complex PTSD — caused partially during the Winter Soldier Hydra/Shield reveal.


	5. Murder Strut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky tries to bond with Bobbi the only way he knows how: violence.

Bobbi was in the gym when Bucky made his way down a few mornings after the dinner. The next day she hadn’t come out of the bedroom and Clint had only emerged to fetch food and water, burrowing back into the darkness with her. Bucky didn’t think they were having sex…the whole time anyway. Mostly he heard soft whispers, and tears and the gentle rhythm of sleeping breath.

Natasha had explained to him why she feared the light, filling in the gaps of what she had stuttered out to him in the bathroom and he’d gone mute with guilt. She’d suffered because of him; because of what Pierce had sent him to do. Nat, being Nat, had felt what he was feeling and they had spent the rest of the day in the Nest in silence themselves, mostly sitting curled around each other in the living room. As night had fallen again, Clint and Bobbi had emerged and they’d all eaten a meal together, cobbled up from left overs. 

The Bucky and Nat had gone back to her floor and spent the night making love, slow and sad and intense. Trying to fill the void of grief and penance they both still carried with them. 

This was the first time he’d seen Bobbi since then. When he emerged from the change room she was methodically moving from weight station to weight station, running through a complex series of exercises with dogged determination.

Tony Stark’s gym didn’t have anything as prosaic as ‘plates’ on the weight machines anymore. Instead the various bars and equipment were magnetic and the repulser powered machines could be set to incredibly high weights. It was the best solution , what with having a god and two super soldiers using the equipment on a daily basis.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noted the weights she was using were…much higher than he would have thought possible for an un-enhanced woman. Natasha had told him about Sam’s warning re: workout anorexia.

He swallowed and braced himself to say something.

When he turned, she was looking at him with a sour, cold expression on her face. 

“If you’re going to gimme grief about the weights, Barnes, remember I’m not at full strength. You got no case for making fun of me.”

Bucky blinked.

“I…uh…what?”

She made an exasperated gesture at her bench press weight which was well into the ‘world record’ territory (he’d look it up later). “Yeah, I’m so carb deprived I feel weak as a kitten.”

“Uh,” he cleared his throat. “I was gonna say maybe they were too high?” To his eternal embarrassment his voice went up a little at the end of the sentence, like he was about to enter ‘squeaky’ range. He doubted he could have pressed that weight, in the days before he’d been changed.

She glared at him. “Don’t be such an asshole. I have to take that shit from Clint but not from you.”

Oh, god, she thought he was being _sarcastic_. 

Before he could say anything, she went back to her workout in a decidedly pissy manner. 

He put the conversation down and walked away, retreating to the far side of the gym and the cardio equipment. He had amazing stamina but Hydra hadn’t built him for burst cardio so he was working on his sprints. 

At some point Bobbi took a treadmill nearby, her face still set into a cold expression. They ran side by side, her doing what should have been a punishing steady run that she made look like a lope and him alternating between flat out sprint and hill climbs. 

He finished first, and drank a very large amount of water, toweling himself off. 

An alarm blared.

Bucky hurled the water bottle and towel away in reflex, spinning in a panic towards the door, what was going on were they under attack—

“Chill, Barnes,” Bobbi said from behind him. “That’s just my ‘you’ve used too many calories’ alarm.” She stepped down from the slowing treadmill and walked to a sealed package on a nearby bench. 

When she opened it up he smelled peppermint and dark chocolate. She took out a ration bar and started gnawing at it, then threw him a look. He nodded and caught the bar she threw him. He walked over and sat next to each her, both chewing purposefully. When they were done, she pulled up one of those amazing floating displays—he recognized her calorie app—and nodded with satisfaction. All her numbers were creeping up from yellow to green. She opened another bar, broke it in half and extended part to him.

“I don’t need it all,’ she mumbled. 

He did though. He finished that half and snagged a third full bar from her bag at her nod. She and Bruce had sat him down and lectured him about his diet as soon as he'd been mentally stable enough. Eating was something that he didn't think about, didn't really care about. Hunger was cold was heat  
was pain was fear...just a sensation. He could ignore it. Then suddenly he was sitting in a dark room with the guy who turned into the Hulk patiently explaining about metabolism and carbs and ketosis and he wasn't stupid but this science crap was not his...he was a sniper. A fighter. And a killer.

It had nearly been comforting when Bobbi had gone what Steve called 'heavily armed mother hen' on him. 

_You will eat at least 5 times a day. If you can't think of what to make, eat what Steve does. And there is a whole freezer on the common level packed with pre-made meals for Steve and Thor; it's yours now too. If you find one  
your particularly like, tell Jarvis and I'll make more of them. You can trust them to be clean that way._

_You make them?_ he'd blurted out, incredulously. 

_It's my one womanly skill,_ she'd laughed.

 _Not according to Clint,_ Banner had shot back with practiced ease and she'd left the room with a snort, pulling Bucky with her to show him the meal-freezer. 

Turned out he was very fond of her salsa verde spiked mac'n'cheese. 

She finished her bar and drank more water with methodical concentration. 

Ah. Yeah. 

He knew that kind of concentration. After he’d run from the river bank in Washington, leaving a bleeding broken Steve behind him, he’d called 911 from what had to be the only working payphone left in the country, then gone to ground like a frightened rabbit. 

While the injuries he’d earned on the helicarrier had healed he’d gone into some kind of weird dissociative state. He found himself screwing and unscrewing the cap of his water bottle until the ridges on the plastic cut into the tips of his fingers. Sometimes he would stand motionless in the middle of the room, watching a single beam of light move across the floor and fade into darkness. The conditioning still screamed at him, a file on his teeth, acid on his spine: _Soldat, you must return to base, to the chair and the pain and the comforting emptiness. Run, Soldat, Run._ The only thing that would hold it back was concentrating on some small, tiny detail. Some action he could repeat successfully, even under the screaming.

_screaming as he fell from train, the icy metal giving way under his hands, Steve’s face contorted in pain and fear as he fell fell fell fell…_

The chair was gone. The technicians were fled or dead. Hydra was in turmoil and there was no one to report to, no plane to board, no single word of praise to savor. Just his desperation, his fear and his broken brain. He’d gone to that museum, seen his own face, seen Steve, seen the Commandos and then he’d run alright. 

He’d run across the sea, living like a vagrant for months as he pieced himself back together. Even now his psyche was held in place with tape and pins and a couple of novelty magnets that said “I Heart NY”.

But whatever solidity he had now had come from being here, with the Avengers, have milli moy back, having Steve back…and realizing that despite everything he’d done that this woman and the rest of the team valued him, cared about his well-being, liked him even.

He had to help her.

While he’d been thinking she’d gotten up and gone into the change room. He heard the sound of the shower and let his brain indulge his groin for a little bit imaging what she looked like, naked and wet and golden. 

Bucky stood up slowly and decided to shower off in the apartment. 

*****

Two days later they wound up in the gym together again. 

Because Bucky planned it that way.

He got there about half-way through weight training and threw her a casual greeting. One eye on her routine, he did some light weights himself. When she headed towards the cardio equipment, he made his move. 

“Hey, you wanna spar?”

He moved over to the matted space that took up about 2/3 of the big room, standing barefoot and open handed.

Bobbi stood very still, studying him, for a fair bit longer than he would have thought she was going to. 

“Why do you want to do that?” She asked eventually, calmly but with suspicious edge.

“Because it’s good cardio for both of us and … well, you realize we haven't? Sparred, that is?” He smiled.

She shook her head. “Never a good time for it. You were either too edgy or I was too injured.” Her tone was brusque, flat. “It’s on the list though, we round-robin about once a year, all the ground fighters. We make Sam join in. Usually invite a few ringers, Daredevil comes most times. Iron Fist and Jessica Jones. Even had a few X-Men. Hawkeye actually won last year, right before you showed up.” She smiled at that, then up at him, her whole demeanor softening. “Daredevil and I stick fight when it’s all done. That’s worth seeing, I’m told.”

“I’ve actually watched the videos,” he admitted to her. “Stark has a compilation available. It’s filed under ‘Things That Make You Go Ow’.” 

She snorted and walked forward, peeling off her soft slipper like shoes at the edge of the mat. “Rule set?” She asked, dropping into a full ballerina split like it was nothing, then stretching forward to touch her head to the mat. 

He nearly laughed, it was such an obvious flex in his direction. 

“Full contact, no broken bones, no eye gouging and I can’t use the bionic arm to break holds.”

She looked up him. “Tap? Or knock out?”

“Tap or unconscious.”

“Agreed.”

They both set about warming up, at the end of which he took off his T-shirt and started to discard it.

“Flag on the play, no bare chest,” Bobbi called. 

“Why not?”

“Because if I have to put up with looking at your pecs then I get a weapon to compensate. A flamethrower preferably.” 

He put his shirt back on, grinning to himself. “Good to know your weakness.”

“Ripped shirtless snipers isn’t precisely my Kryptonite but close enough.”

“You ready?”

“Yeah, let’s rumble.”

They faced off across the mat, both moving a little side to side. He found himself watching her face and noticed she was watching his chest in return. He experimented with a few forward rushes, some side motions and her eyes never left his center of mass.

That impressed him. It was hard to teach that and if you caught the hang of it it let you sense motion and attack in the same glance. He let his own gaze drift down to her chest and it was a testament to how seriously he was taking this that he only briefly thought: _Great tits_ before focussing on her motions.

He’d studied her…before he even came to the Tower, he thought. He could remember cold gloomy metal rooms and surveillance footage on battered TV’s of a tall golden woman with sticks, methodically battering down Hydra agents, terrorists, professional killers. He thought, briefly, that there had been discussion of sending him to kill her but that it would have taken him too close to…someone they wouldn’t let him remember. 

Once he’d settled down in the Tower, he’d spent many a sleepless night reviewing combat footage for the team, to better sense how he would fit in, where he would be most useful. He’d loved to watch the few full fights that were available of Mockingbird and Captain America plowing through some set line of infantry. They moved together as one, her striking at enemies with her sticks or staff, protecting his open side, him using his shield to cover her from fire. They danced around the flight of arrow, gunshots from Falcon and Black Widow, repulser fire from Iron Man. They split and reformed as lightening struck and the Hulk pounded the ground to create his own mini-earthquakes.

But it had been watching her spar, in the full contact, one-step-down-from-combat sessions that Steve insisted on that had really impressed him. In war, on a battlefield you need hold nothing back. Make no adjustments, show no mercies.

Sparring? They couldn’t cripple each other. They had to control themselves and still make the strikes count. He already knew women were as effective in war as any man. But other than the Black Widow program part of his brain doubted he’d ever see a “normal” woman who could stand against someone like him.

Right up until he’d watched Mockingbird “break” Steve’s shoulder and “stab” him in the eye. 

Until he’d watched her get kicked seventeen feet into a wall, land hard and come back up fighting, semi-conscious on her feet. 

Until he’d seen her slap two arrows out of the air in front of her before knocking her own husband unconscious with three strikes. 

He felt a smile crease his face. She was an unorthodox, unpredictable and slightly terrifying opponent. This was going to be so much fun.

“Oh, now that’s just not fair,” she muttered, pursing her own lips at him.

On the word “fair” she crossed the distance between them in a single tumbling pass and hammered him onto his back with two feet into his chest. 

“Neither was that,” she said, sweetly. Then she was past him, not trying to close or attack him on the ground, where his weight and strength negated her speed and agility. 

He popped to his feet and turned to track her, out of grabbing range. The part of his brain that was the cold, calculating Soldat noted she was appreciably slower than normal. Still weak, still healing.

 _Use that_ the Soldier muttered in the back of his head. _Hurt her._

Bucky snarled at the ghost in his thoughts and nearly missed her second pass, still swift as a bird, light as a butterfly, lethal as a tiger. He spun away from her kick, low to the back of his leg, an under-appreciated target and turned his spin into a vicious chop to the side of her head. It missed but it spooked her enough to force her out and away from him again.

This time he followed in a rush, not giving her time to recover. The world narrowed to her hair, her hands, her torso, the mats. He moved fast, faster than a human. 

Yet, somehow she avoided him, enough to duck under his first blow and ram her elbow into his side, just under his rib cage. Right over his liver.

The pain cascaded outward from the blow like cracks in glass, shooting up his spine, down his legs across his chest. His breath wooshed out of his lungs and he staggered. She came in again, a twisting upward strike to his diaphragm, to prevent him from drawing that air back.

In his pained confusion, The Soldier took over.

His flesh hand slammed downward, met her fist and caught it. Still breathless, needing no breath, he twisted the hand around like a door knob. Most people resisted the motion and their arm would spiral fracture behind the force but she turned with it, flipping 360 and landing on her feet off to his side. He still had her hand in his grip and he jerked her towards him. She leapt into his chest before he could tighten his grip, slammed her free hand into his bent elbow joint and turned her fist out of his fingers against the thumb.

There were no more grins, no more quips. His whole body motion changed, his shoulders and hips going square and loose, the Soldier’s ‘murder strut’ as Natasha had called it. She skipped and staggered backwards away from him, shaking her arm in obvious pain. He followed her like a shark, smooth, cool, precise and on target.

Bucky pounded at the Soldier’s thoughts with his own. _Stop it! She’s not your enemy, she’s not your mission!_

The Soldier ignored him and kept moving towards the woman with bad intent. 

She ramped up, striking fast, hitting hard but she had to hit him four or five times for every strike of his and she simply couldn’t keep up the pace. Not and keep the fight non-lethal. If she’d had her weapons it might have been different. If she hadn’t been weak it might have been different.

But it was non-lethal and she was weak and mistakes were made (and it was mistakes, a cascade of error, not simply a mis-step that let him get his arm around her torso in the end. Even from inside the ice-rimmed void of the Soldier, Bucky was impressed at her tactics, her skill, her fighting spirit. He got it, now, why Steve spoke so highly of her. This was a **warrior** ). 

The Soldier got her around the chest and waist as she turned not quite fast enough, his flesh arm skipping up to lie against her throat. He reared back and he was tall enough that her feet lost purchase on the mat, scrabbling in mid air.

Coolly, methodically, he applied pressure, feeling first the air and then the blood cut off against his skin, hyper senses conveying complex information simply from the way her heart beat slowed and stuttered. The Soldier started the count down in his head, 30 seconds to unconscious, 60 to deat—

“No!” Bucky snarled, taking everything back from the Soldier in a rush. He dropped her limp body to the floor and stepped back away from her, his nerves on fire, his brain buzzing like a burning wasps nest. 

He stared down at the blond woman, lying in a heap with her eyes closed. Slowly her right hand came up, found her left arm across her chest and her fingers tapped against it, once, twice.

“Ladies and Gentlemen we have a winner!” Cried a voice from behind him.

Bucky jumped half a foot and spun around to see the entire team PLUS Leo Fitz PLUS Sharon Carter crowded at the edge of the mat. Tony Stark had been the one crying out and in response he got a round of applause. Clint, grinning, stalked past him and fetched a limp Bobbi up from the ground. 

“Got more’en you bargained for, little bird?” He chirped at her.

“No, that was the exact pay schedule I was expecting, right down to the Soldier showing up,” she coughed back at him, hoarse. 

“What part of ‘We should all be there, for safety,’ did you not get, Mock?” Asked Sam in a tight growl as the two Bartons limped past Bucky. 

“Ah, come’on. I knew Jarvis would go all ‘Morpheus is fighting Neo!’ On us. Also, it was his idea,” Bobbi responded, sounding stronger already.

“Hold up!” Bucky barked. “You…this was something you all talked about? Me fighting her.”

Bobbi poked Clint in the ribs until he turned her to face Bucky. “Yeah, we did. It’s my job to assess skills for the team spread sheet. Shoulda done it months ago but like I said never a good time. This wasn’t even a good time but it came up organically and that’s always a better assessment.”

“You…you expected…him to show? The Soldier?”

“Expected? Needed. Not a full breakdown without knowing if you can control him or not. And you can. A+.”

 **”I COULD HAVE KILLED YOU”** Bucky shrieked, clutching at his hair. Natasha clicked her tongue and made her way to him, gently untangling his fingers and holding them in her own. 

“You? Nah. Him, sure. But he went back into his kennel when you wanted him too and unlike you — I knew they were all here. Thor and Cap coulda pulled you off me. Calculated risk, which is all of them for us.” Bobbi grinned at him. “I’ve got PTSD and an eating disorder Buck, I’m not _bad at my job_.” She was standing straight now, though she was obviously favoring her injured arm still. She and Clint walked off the mats and Captain America put his hand out to stop her. 

He and Mockingbird looked at each other like they had the other night but this time there was very little tension between them. His mouth curled up at the edges and he nodded slightly.

“Back on the roster, Mockingbird. Full night patrol tomorrow. Rest up; make snacks.”

Bobbi’s back straightened and her eyes lit up. 

“Welcome back to the team, you doofus,” Bruce Banner said softly, still shaking his head at them all. “Let’s go get some anti-inflammatories into that elbow.”


	6. The Reckless One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi and Steve have another of their little talks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terribly sorry for the long delay here. 
> 
> I’ll have a teaser up for the next Mockingverse story quite soon.
> 
> It’s going to be a little odd :-)

The next night Captain America and Mockingbird ran their routine patrol through the city in their usual set up. He was on his chopper and she had her sleek ‘Mockingblue’ racing bike for better mobility. They were separated by a few blocks but in constant comm and sensor contact.

The Avengers rotated on call duty every week and each pairing had their own style. Falcon and Iron Man, obviously, tended to patrol from the air, though there was no set requirement about actually even leaving the Tower. As long as the long range sensors were monitored and someone was awake and watching the appropriate screens, patrol duty could be spent on the couch of the common floor. 

Though they did have a rule about ‘no sex while on duty’ which Bobbi and Clint had only broken a couple few dozen times thank you very much. 

Bobbi and Steve, though, both loved helping out with street level incidents and it showed. They weren’t strictly needed—more than once Daredevil, the Daughters of the Dragon and Spider-Man were actively startled when they appeared—but they just both liked doing simple tangible things to help out the community in general. 

Tonight they didn’t banter the way they usually did, with Steve mock-growling at her and her teasing him. They were cordial but it was…awkward. 

They made it all the way to the south tip of Manhattan before they broke to drink, snack and plan their next route. Bobbi had kept working on the new ration bar flavors and she had a few of each in her kit—as well as one he hadn’t known she was making.

“Apple pie?” Steve said after he cracked open the reusable pouch, the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg and butter and golden delicious wafting up to him.

“Yeah, Bucky put me onto it. The aromatics are BITCH though so tell me what you think; that’s a prototype.” 

He chewed thoughtfully, seriously, while she wolfed down one of the lemon bars. When he looked up she was leaning on her bike, grinning at him.

“It’s a flavored food bar, Steve, not the Constitution. You don’t have to be so…intent.”

He grimaced at her. “This is your work, work you do for the good of the team. I’m not going to disrespect it.”

She rolled her eyes and made a ‘spin on’ gesture. “You’re allowed to be an asshole to me, Steve. I’ve earned it.”

He shrugged. “That’s not me and you know it.”

“Yeah, right.” Bobbi straightened up and stepped towards him. “Your cover is blown, big man. Since Bucky showed, blown to kingdom come.”

“What are you talking about?”

She pointed at him. “You’ve been rewriting your personal history since the day you woke up. I’m not even 100% sure you know you do it.”

Steve jerked up to his full height and glared down at her, icy. She waved the look away, coming another step closer till they were almost chest to chest. Her face was calm and serious now, still a little hollow in the cheeks, her collar bone still a little too prominent. Looking at her, he saw the health returning, the old ‘Never makes mistakes; Always has a plan’ Mockingbird back almost to strength. He’d seen her very clearly in the gym, when she fought Bucky. That’s when he knew he couldn’t keep her wrapped in cotton anymore. 

He knew everyone thought he was keeping her off the roster to punish her; he did it to keep her safe. He’d keep them all off the roster if he could, forever. 

It was Mockingbird looking at him now, not Bobbi. That scared him. Both of them loved him but Bobbi was kinder about it. 

“The way you tell it, the way history tells it, you’re the man with the plan, right? The strategic thinker, the soldier. The serious one. And Bucky was your happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sidekick. But that’s not true, is it?” She leaned in and placed her fingers on the star on his chest, splayed out against the scale mail of his ‘street’ costume. “Bucky—tall, strong, capable—was drafted. You—weak, sickly, one step from keeling over—kept trying to volunteer.’ She shoved a little, until he resisted. “Bucky looked after you like a nurse, brought you food, tried to keep you out of trouble, patched you up when he couldn’t. You ran straight at every fight you could find, despite knowing you were going to minimum get your ass kicked. Bucky hated being at war—he was there because he got drafted. He’d have stayed in New York if he could’ve—didn’t leave you alone, because he was afraid of what you’d do, trying to get into a fight no one else wanted a part of.”

She smiled a little, but not at him, off into the middle distance. “Nat keeps leaving him with me, because she smartly knows he’s strong enough to stop me doing something stupid but also because she and I share that spy thing about information gathering. I don’t think he’s talked to her about you much. I think talking to her about you activates the bad memories of her training, when just the hint of remembering you got him thrown back into the ice. But he’ll talk to me about his buddy Stevie. Specially since I love talking strategy and tactics.”

“He likes smart women,” Steve offered, almost shyly, despite the unease this whole conversation was causing him. “Smart, tough women. The harder they made him work to charm them, the better he liked it.”

“He’s a hunter; it’s coded in there with the marksman thing. Clint’s the same,” she said with a nod. “So, he gets drafted, he gets captured, he gets experimented on. His entire experience of war is about as bad as it can get—until you come charging in on your metaphorical white horse. The first super hero; the first Avenger. Now he’s got a choice. He can legit take his purple heart and his service record and stay in England, at least for a while. Maybe even get shipped back State-side; they’d banged him up pretty good.”  
She dug her fingers into his chest again, for emphasis. “But he can’t can he? He _can’t leave you_. He can’t let you down. So no matter how scared he is about what Zola did to him — and I’ve seen the earliest files, it’s pretty clear the experiments they did on him were unusual, bizarre — he can’t just take off. So he follows—”

“The little guy from Brooklyn, too dumb to run from a fight,” Steve said under his breath, mesmerized by the story she was spinning. 

“He stayed because he loved you, because he would have been humiliated if he hadn’t and because he could never tell you how scared he really was. He was forced into the war and then forced to stay because his brother in all but blood wasn’t going to do this work without him.”

She shook her head and let her fingers pulse against his chest plate. “I think you knew that too, even if you didn’t know you knew it because when you lost him, what did you do? Crashed a plane into the Arctic first chance you got.” She laid her hand flat against the star, covering it up and pushed hard. Steve shifted his weight and shoved back this time, pushing her several steps away.

She looked up at him and laughed, just a little, but without humor. “You, dialed up to fifteen like the Serum does, created a man everyone wants to follow into battle. They hit Bucky with the serum and they get this quiet, calm, calculating killer. He doesn’t want to inspire people into combat, he wants to _end the fight_ as fast as he can. Can’t hide it anymore, Captain.” 

She moved into him again, fast and smooth, until she was butted up against his chest, breathing up into his face. 

“Bucky wasn’t the reckless one like you’ve been trying to convince the universe and everyone in it. You were. Busted, motherf—”

Steve covered her mouth with his hand. “Language,” he snapped.

They stared into each others eyes.

The next second they were both laughing, Bobbi leaning into his chest, Steve dropping his chin onto her head. 

“I swear, how did you all go from ‘Barnes is a jerk’ to the Bucky Booster Club? Last week Sam—Sam!—told me he was glad to have Buck on the team,” Steve said, his chest heaving a little. 

“Well, I’ve been okay with him a while, once we beat the ‘overt chauvinistic protection’ thing out of him. And you know he came at me to fight yesterday because he wanted to help me regain my confidence? It was transparent.” She bounced her head off the star and laughed again. “Kinda cute, too.”

Steve snorted. “I’ve never said I wasn’t reckless. You don’t get thrown into dumpsters when you’re as breakable as I was if you’re not reckless. He was the one without fear when it came to the good things in life: having fun, meeting girls. I was reckless with my health because—”

“Because you never expected to live very long so you wanted it to mean something,” she interrupted him flatly. 

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Now, that’s not a problem so much but I’m worried about all of you. Traded one set of worries for another. Though, getting Buck back takes a lot of that away.”

“About that..” she said in a faint voice. 

“Hold that thought, I’m on a roll here. Jarvis,” said Steve, “can you loop the surveillance cameras around here for a minute or two, please? Like, from just before we both started laughing?”

“Of course, Captain,” responded the AI.

Bobbi stepped back a pace. “What do you want to do that needs privacy?” Her tone was light but there was a tension in her body language. 

“This,” he said, then pulled her into a bear hug, dropping a chaste kiss onto her forehead. “Seeing this on the tabloid websites would just cheapen it. Don’t…don’t scare me like that again, sis. Don’t make me doubt you like that. I’d rather doubt my shield than you. We need you on the team, I need you strong and healthy. Bucky clearly needs you to stick up for him.” She settled into his arms with a gentle, peaceful ease, sighing. “You’re right about all that. Bucky was the suave, charming one; from the outside that made him look like some kind of…what’s the term? Player? But he was always…he could never stop caring for me. Even when I didn’t physically need him anymore. It got him…well, killed.” He kissed her forehead again, letting his mouth rest against her hair for a moment, enjoying the sense of intense intimacy without desire. “What were you going to say a minute ago?”

“Oh, umm, yeah. It’s about how you an’ Nat are treating him right now. You have the same problem from different sides,” she said, muffled against his chest. “You want him to be the best version of Bucky, the one you saw in him growing up together. Nat wants him to be a noblest version of the Winter Soldier, the one she saw when he was training her. What Bucky is now—what the Soldier is now—is something else. He’s both and he’s neither and it’s more than just the two parts all smushed together. Even he hasn’t worked it all out yet. The two of you better give him some damn room to figure out who he is, Steve.”

He released her, nodding. “We’re smothering him, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “And he loves you both with his whole heart so he’s trying to be both versions at the same time and they can’t live in the same body. We’re trying to _fix_ his DID, Steve, not make it worse.”

“He did okay yesterday.”

“Yeah, when I suicidally invoked the Winter Solider into close combat with me he didn’t murder me in the face, no. That needs to remain the trend.” She ran a hand over her hair, pulling it back into a pony tail with the scrunchy she had hooked over her wrist. “Bucky got swallowed up by the Winter Solider, as much to protect him — and his memories of you — as anything else or Hydra would have been able to erase him. So when he started coming back he kinda had to hollow out the Winter Soldier to do it. Nature abhors a vacuum—it filled the space with a new person, this guy who isn’t your childhood friend OR the man Nat knew. It’s that guy — that embryonic Bucky Barnes — that we’ve got now. It’s one reason why I want to keep him on the team. I look at him and see Bucky Barnes, the guy from history books. But I see the Winter Solider too, the killer ghost from a dozen missions and a dozen dozen spy horror stories. I think—if you give him the time to figure it out, give him some space, give him respect , what’ll come out in the wash is a new version of both of those: Bucky Barnes, Avenger.”

“That’s my only goal here.”

“Good, so back the hell off him a little. He’s not a kid, he’s not helpless and he needs room to see what he looks like in the mirror. Once he sees that clearly, you and Nat have to see it too. Or this isn’t going to work.”

“I’ll talk to her about it. Seems like it might be past due he takes a spot on the duty roster full time.”

“Agreed. Also, he’s got the skills to be team lead. You should be using that; it’ll help make up for all the times I manage to get broken.”

Steve flipped his cowl back on, pausing while he did up his chin strap. “No, you need to stop getting hurt and you especially need to—what was it I just said?— _Never scare me like that again_.”

Bobbi threw her hands dramatically into the air as she mounted her sleek racing bike. “Fine you big bully! I’ll just have to work on my mental health issues like a grown up or something!” She waved at him as he mounted up too. “The ration bar? What was wrong with it? You didn’t look delighted.”

“It tasted okay but from you okay seems like a failure,” he said seriously. “I think it was the spice balance.”

“It’s that wretched cinnamon.” She shook her fist into the air and shouted. “Curse you cinnamon!”

Repressing a smile, Steve hit the ignition on his motorcycle (he sorta missed the kick start but Stark had refitted all their vehicles with his arc reactor tech: near-silent, no need to refuel and frighteningly fast) and they took off together, weaving through the streets of New York, looking out for trouble.

*****

Things trended upward from there.

Trended. There were set backs.

Just after her second mission back, a super-villain hit on the Federal Reserve, Mockingbird got locked into a vault with four henchmen. No light, no air. When the Hulk ripped the door off about twelve minutes later the henchmen were down and out (one was dead, broken neck) and Mockingbird was huddled on her knees, batons in hand, face pressed into the front of her thighs.

The only reason the person who hauled her out of the vault didn’t lose their arm is it was the Hulk and not even the blades on her weapons could cut him. She got it together when Hulk literally threw her across the room with an irritated yell, using her bo-staff to rebound off a wall and land safely, but back at the Tower she went to pieces.  
For three days the team had to take it in shifts to force her to eat. She also made it all the way to an elevator shaft the first night; Steve, Bucky and or Nat slept in front of the door of the Nest for the next two. 

But the trend was upward. 

One morning several weeks later the entire team happened to be on the communal floor having breakfast together. That happened a few times a month, when the stars aligned.

Thor and Sam were coming off the night shift, both hungry from the cold fresh air above the city. Stark and Banner had gone into deep “science bros” mode and only just realized they hadn’t eaten anything all night. The rest of the group were up early, coming to or going from the gym in various states of resignation. 

Bucky had ‘accidentally’ drunk coffee from the “Clint Only” pot and was fending off aggrieved needling from the archer with faux-dark glowering and some carefully phrased Russian. Natasha was working her way through rye bread toast with black cherry jam and rolling her eyes at both of them.

Bobbi was methodically working her way through a post-workout meal, head down, scanning the news on her Starktab.

Steve was the last one in the room, bounding out of the elevator freshly showered and greeting everyone cheerfully.

“Who let the golden retriever into the Tower?” snarked Stark.

“Your father,” Steve retorted, rummaging through the cupboards to start assembling his breakfast. 

“Jarvis, please note that today Steve Rogers made a ‘yo daddy’ joke,” Bruce said in a solemn tone. 

A little snickering chorus went around the room and everyone went back to what they were doing. Conversation ebbed and flowed, with a companionable comfort that they could not always achieve. But today was free and easy—

—until Bobbi glanced up sharply. She had a searching expression on her face, her nose all but twitching.

“What’s that smell?” She asked.

The scent of spices and sugar, cream and fruit wafted across the kitchen area, coming from the little windowed breakfast nook where Steve sat reading an actual physical copy of the New York Times. 

He had just stuffed a spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth and was dipping it back down again.

Like a speedster, Bobbi dropped her Starktab on the table top and darted across the tiles. She snatched the spoon and bowl from the shocked super soldier’s hands and danced away from him. 

“What the heck, Bobbi?” Steve yelped, getting to his feet.

Bobbi had her own mouthful of his oatmeal and couldn’t speak. Everyone else in the room had stopped speaking and were just staring at the interplay between them. Bobbi and Steve going at it was always entertaining. 

Bobbi swallowed with evident pleasure and pointed the spoon at Steve. “You just stay back, Rogers.” She scooped up another spoonful and presented it to Bucky with a flourish. “This. Is this right?”

Bucky looked from her to Steve to the spoon to Natasha, almost panicked. Nat cocked her head at him. “She asked you a question, James.”

Gingerly, eyeing a frozen and confused Steve, Bucky took the spoon and quickly ate the oatmeal off it, handing it back to Bobbi. He swallowed, still looking worried…and then the expression on his face slowly melted into surprised joy.

“Yes!” He exclaimed. “That’s exactly right.”

Bobbi ate another mouthful of the cereal herself, closing her eyes with pleasure. “It’s the oatmeal. That underlying subdued aspect takes the edge off the wretched cinnamon. I gotta get this to the lab.”

She bolted out of the room to the staircase, since the lab was only two floors up.

“I was enjoying that,” Steve said plaintively to her back.

“What just happened?” Asked Clint. 

“Well, I just saw Bobbi eat off the same spoon as two other people without blinking so—I don’t really care?” Offered Sam. 

“She’s been trying to make apple pie ration bars for weeks now but the aromatics have been killing her,” mused Bruce. “I think that’s what she was talking about?”

“Yeah,” supplied Bucky, turning to hand Steve a plate of Natasha’s toast. “She’s been feeding them to me and they were never quite there. I guess that oatmeal Steve made tasted…right finally?”

“Your wife is really weird,” Tony said to Clint, then attacked his eggs again. 

“I knew that,” Clint replied, taking a long swig out of the coffee pot. “Weird chicks are great in bed.”

“I favor spirited women of great wit and courage,” Thor rumbled as he readied another plate of toaster pastries. “Which in truth does describe your lady, Clinton.”

“She stole my oatmeal,” Steve said sadly, then bit disconsolately into the toast he’d been given. “But I guess it’s for science.”

“Guys, guys, concentrate — we all just watched her eat off the same spoon as two other people. Even a few weeks ago, can you see that happening?” Sam said. This second time it seemed to dawn on them collectively what had just happened. Smiles broke on every face, relief and happiness in every eye.

Steve snagged his Starkphone out of his pocket and holding it where they could all see he found Bobbi’s calorie tracker…

…and deleted it.

“It’s always going to be there,” Sam warned him. “She might relapse someday.”

“And if she does, we’ll be there for her again.” Steve grinned at him. “We’re family.”


End file.
